Digital Commons Network^™

Course Correction: My Term At Afghanistan's Graduate School Of War, Ganesh Sitaraman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Camp Julien is surrounded by reminders of Afghanistan's past. The coalition military base which sits in the hills south of Kabul, just high enough to rise above the thick cloud of smog that perpetually blankets the city, is flanked by two European-style palaces built in the 1920s by the modernizing King Amanullah. Home to Soviet troops and mujahedin during the past decades of war, the now-crumbling palaces are littered with bullet holes and decorated with graffiti in multiple languages. Uphill from Julien is the old Russian officers' club, dating from the Soviet invasion and featuring a recently refilled swimming pool …

Environmental Law, Rachael Anderson-Watts, Naeha Dixit, Christopher J. Dunsky

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The decisions of the Michigan Supreme Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals during the Survey period, May 23, 2007 to July 30, 2008, did not dramatically change the course of environmental law in Michigan, nor did they contain any major surprises. The state Supreme Court's decision in Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation v. Nestl Waters North America, Inc. is the most significant decision in the Survey period because it held that plaintiffs in Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) cases must now satisfy federal standing requirements. Although the Nestl9 decision may make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to use …

Brain Imaging For Legal Thinkers: A Guide For The Perplexed, Owen D. Jones, Joshua W. Buckholtz, Jeffrey D. Schall, Rene Marois

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It has become increasingly common for brain images to be proffered as evidence in criminal and civil litigation. This Article - the collaborative product of scholars in law and neuroscience - provides three things.

First, it provides the first introduction, specifically for legal thinkers, to brain imaging. It describes in accessible ways the new techniques and methods that the legal system increasingly encounters.

Second, it provides a tutorial on how to read and understand a brain-imaging study. It does this by providing an annotated walk-through of the recently-published work (by three of the authors - Buckholtz, Jones, and Marois) that …

Negotiation In Cross-Cultural Marriages : An Exploratory Qualitative Study Among Middle Class Professionals In Hong Kong, Pui Kwan Man

Lingnan Theses

This thesis attempts to focus on families and their children (if any) in cross-cultural marriages. These families potentially face extra stress and strains in addition to those which all families face. As a result of recent social and economic changes, certain roles such as those of the breadwinner and caregiver, traditionally male-female roles, may be becoming more interchangeable. Cross-cultural families’ may have differences in cultural backgrounds, attitudes and expectations, as well as potential support networks, so the research will investigate whether these sorts of changes place even greater than usual demands on families.

Therefore, it may be important for couples …

A Defense Of The Integrationist Test As A Replacement For The Special Defense Of Insanity, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, written for a symposium on "Criminal Law and the Excuses," defends the "Integrationist" approach to analysis of the exculpatory effect of mental disability that I developed in Chapter Two of my book, Minding Justice: Laws that Deprive People with Mental Disability of Life and Liberty. The book argues that the special nature of the insanity defense should be reconsidered now that modern criminal law, in particular the Model Penal Code, has subjectivized affirmative defenses such as self-defense and duress for people who are not mentally ill. More specifically, the claim is that these latter defenses capture the universe …

Antibiotics, Herbs, And Magic: Health Practices In Contemporary St. Petersburg, Christine Shu

Honors Theses

In St. Petersburg, Russia, two seemingly conflicting health doctrines, western medicine and alternative medicine, play significant roles in residents' health culture. I define alternative medicine as all health practices that use such natural products as herbs, natural honey, water, seeds, berries, and even animal products, and as such unobtrusive body therapies as acupuncture, massage, yoga, or animal therapies. I define western medicine as all treatments that involve the manipulation of ingredients in a chemistry laboratory (such as antibiotics, antiviral drugs, antihistamines. or pain killers) and all body therapies intrusive to the body (such as operations). Through interviews with St. Petersburg …

Serendipity, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Serendipity, the process of finding something of value initially unsought, has played a prominent role in modern science and technology. These "happy accidents" have spawned new fields of science, broken intellectual and technological barriers, and furnished countless products that have altered the course of human history. In the realm of patent law, one curious aspect of accidental discoveries that has received little attention in the academic literature and the courts is how they mesh with the substantive law of invention. This Essay shows that applying conventional doctrines to accidental inventions is theoretically untenable and, in certain circumstances, may result in …

Cities, Green Construction, And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The geographic footprint of cities--the space they occupy--is relatively small in comparison to their ecological footprint, which is measured in terms of impact on the sustainability of resources situated mostly outside of the urban realm. Ironically, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), though widely regarded as one of the most powerful environmental laws, has been and continues to be administered with respect to urbanized land masses primarily with the objective of managing their geographic footprints. This Article uses the example of "green construction" techniques to explore this disconnect between the macro-scale contribution of cities' ecological footprints to species endangerment and the …

Queering Sex Machines : The Re-Articulation Of Non-Normative Sexualities And Technosexual Bodies, Hok Bun, Isaac Leung

Lingnan Theses

From the simple electronic vibrator to the complex assemblages of cybersex, sex and technology have always intersected. The dynamic relations between sexuality and technology are constantly changing along with the ways in which human beings achieve psychological and bodily pleasure through these devices. Sex machine, a term that denotes an automated device that can assist human in the pursuits of sex, has been broadly defined as therapeutic and pleasure machines in the West. Large numbers of sex machines have been documented in Europe and America starting from the nineteenth century, and were widely produced and utilized by medical practitioners, sex …

Ethical Problems In Connection With World Poverty, Wing Fan

Lingnan Theses

World economy has been doing well in recent decades even taking into account the current financial crisis. However, there are even more people suffering from poverty and related issues than earlier. I am going to discuss the issue of helping poor people in the context of ethics.

In my thesis, I will firstly state the standard of absolute poverty, which will be the main focus in the remainder of the text. Then, I will present the argument given by a contemporary philosopher, Peter Singer, that urges us to give money to the poor people. I will go through his argument …

Ballcourt Iconography At Caracol, Belize, Patsy Holden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the more commonly known aspects of the ancient Maya culture is the ballgame. This ancient ballgame was played by most Mesoamerican cultures on a constructed ballcourt and many major Mesoamerican sites have at least one, if not more than one. Contemporary Mesoamericans still play versions of this ballgame today, but without the use of the ballcourts, questioning the importance and purpose of the ballcourt that is no longer the case today. After over a century of research, scholars have yet to unravel all the cosmological and mythological mysteries of the ballcourt and its purpose to the ancient Maya. …

A Model Of Treating Hyperfunctional Voice Disorders For School Age Children Within A Serious Gaming Environment, Suzanne King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study is to test the feasibility of implementing a video-game based intervention protocol as a means to improve therapy compliance in school age children with hyperfunctional voice disorders. Three levels of modification were made to an existing entertainment software program in order to implement the therapeutic protocol and test compatibility. The third level of modification included a two-phase quasi-experimental single subject design with a school age participant receiving the video game therapy protocol and traditional therapy for equal time. The independent variables for this study included the mode of voice therapy delivery (traditional vs. video …

The Whole Headlight-Colored Night, Matthew Bryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short fiction probes the lives of characters trying to make their home in the flat, unchanging landscape of the small towns that make up central Florida. The largely static environment reflects the rigid patterns of behavior and domesticity the characters find themselves so easily falling into. Seemingly ordinary items-a shotgun, a t-shirt, a paper bag-and the small moments that make up everyday life are imbued with significance as men and women painfully aware of their own ordinariness struggle to hold onto those fragile instances of connection, happiness, or even their own self-constructed sense of identity. The struggle …

Selling Sunshine: How Cypress Gardens Defined Florida, 1935-2004, David Dinocola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between Cypress Gardens and the state of Florida. Specifically, it focuses on how the creator of the park, Dick Pope, created his park after his own idealized vision of the state, and how he then promoted both his park and Florida as one and the same. The growth and later decline of Cypress Gardens follows trends in Florida's growth patterns and shifts in tourism. This study primarily uses a combination of newspaper sources and promotional pictures and other media from the park to explain how Pope attempted to make Cypress Gardens synonymous with Florida. In …

Taking The Initiative: Exploring The Influence Of Citizen Legislating On Good Goverance In The American States, Kerri Milita

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The citizen legislator is both a controversial and recurring phenomenon of interest in political science research. A longstanding concern for the discipline has been whether or not involvement of the public in the lawmaking process is an asset or a liability to quality governance. This study explores the desirability of citizen legislating in the American states. A four dimensional index is created that includes empirical indicators of "substantive" and "procedural" governance. These indicators include voter turnout, fiscal health, the ideological distance between government and the citizenry, and the diversity of a state's interest group system. The total number of initiatives …

The Role Of The Internet As A Tool To Aid In U.S. Adult Consumers' Weight Loss, Jaclyn Kirby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on ways the Internet can positively influence and educate U.S. Americans to become healthier and eventually lose weight. Throughout the past 30 years, the percentage of overweight and obese adults in the U.S. has increased immensely, resulting in a nationwide epidemic (American Association for Public Opinion Research, 2006; Center for Disease Control, 2006; Goodman, 2005; The Obesity Society, 2008). The research question for this thesis is the following: What are the perceptions of U.S. adult consumers regarding the positive influence the Internet has on weight loss? In order to determine the influence of the Internet on U.S. …

Interaction Between Bacteriophage Dms3 And Host Crispr Region Inhibits Group Behaviors Of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Michael E. Zegans, Jeffrey C. Wagner, Kyle C. Cady, Daniel M. Murphy, John H. Hammond, George A. O'Toole

Dartmouth Scholarship

Bacteriophage infection has profound effects on bacterial biology. Clustered regular interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and cas (CRISPR-associated) genes are found in most archaea and many bacteria and have been reported to play a role in resistance to bacteriophage infection. We observed that lysogenic infection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 with bacteriophage DMS3 inhibits biofilm formation and swarming motility, both important bacterial group behaviors. This inhibition requires the CRISPR region in the host. Mutation or deletion of five of the six cas genes and one of the two CRISPRs in this region restored biofilm formation and swarming …

Opportunistic Sensing: Security Challenges For The New Paradigm, Apu Kapadia, David Kotz, Nikos Triandopoulos

Dartmouth Scholarship

We study the security challenges that arise in Opportunistic people-centric sensing, a new sensing paradigm leveraging humans as part of the sensing infrastructure. Most prior sensor-network research has focused on collecting and processing environmental data using a static topology and an application-aware infrastructure, whereas opportunistic sensing involves collecting, storing, processing and fusing large volumes of data related to everyday human activities. This highly dynamic and mobile setting, where humans are the central focus, presents new challenges for information security, because data originates from sensors carried by people— not tiny sensors thrown in the forest or attached to animals. In this …

Micrornas And Metazoan Macroevolution: Insights Into Canalization, Complexity, And The Cambrian Explosion, Michael Dietrich, Mark Mcpeek, Kevin J. Peterson

Dartmouth Scholarship

One of the most interesting challenges facing paleobiologists is explaining the Cambrian explosion, the dramatic appearance of most metazoan animal phyla in the Early Cambrian, and the subsequent stability of these body plans over the ensuing 530 million years. We propose that because phenotypic variation decreases through geologic time, because microRNAs (miRNAs) increase genic precision, by turning an imprecise number of mRNA transcripts into a more precise number of protein molecules, and because miRNAs are continuously being added to metazoan genomes through geologic time, miRNAs might be instrumental in the canalization of development. Further, miRNAs ultimately allow for natural selection …

Homeotic Mutants And The Assimilation Of Developmental Genetics Into The Evolutionary Synthesis, Michael Dietrich, Gregory K. Davis, David K. Jacobs

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Education And Crime, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the topic of education and crime. While at first glance this appears to be a simple task, there is an inherent complexity in examining such a broad subject. There are many different perspectives from which a discussion of education and crime could develop. Criminologists might assume this would be an overview of the impact that an individual’s education level may have upon their criminal or anti-social behavior. On the other hand, parents might assume this is a discussion of the impact of school violence and crime upon the safety …

Why Resilience May Not Always Be A Good Thing: Lessons In Ecosystem Restoration From Glen Canyon And The Everglades, Sandra B. Zellmer, Lance Gunderson

Faculty Law Review Articles

No abstract provided.

Perinatal Risk Factors For Developmental Coordination Disorder, Beth P. Hands, Garth Kendall, Dawne Larkin, Elizabeth Rose, Helen Parker

Health Sciences Papers and Journal Articles

The aetiology of mild motor disability (MMD) is a complex issue and as yet is poorly understood. The aim of this study was to identify the prevalence of perinatal risk factors in a cohort of 10-year-old boys and girls with (n = 362) and without (n = 1193) MMD. Among the males with MMD there was a higher prevalence of postpartum haemorrhage, caesarean section, low birth weight and stressful first year of life. Among the females with MMD, there was a higher prevalence of essential hypertension, anaemia, and threatened pre-term. Multivariable logistic regression revealed gender (male), anaemia, threatened pre-term birth …

Self-Renewal Of The Long-Term Reconstituting Subset Of Hematopoietic Stem Cells Is Regulated By Ikaros, Peter Papathanasiou, Joanne L. Attema, Holger Karsunky, Naoki Hosen, Yovina Sontani, Gerard F. Hoyne, Robert Tunningly, Stephen T. Smale, Irving L. Weissman

Health Sciences Papers and Journal Articles

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are rare, ancestral cells that underlie the development, homeostasis, aging, and regeneration of the blood. Here we show that the chromatin-associated protein Ikaros is a crucial self-renewal regulator of the long-term (LT) reconstituting subset of HSCs. Ikaros, and associated family member proteins, are highly expressed in self-renewing populations of stem cells. Ikaros point mutant mice initially develop LT-HSCs with the surface phenotype cKit+Thy1.1(lo)Lin(-/lo)Sca1+Flk2-CD150+ during fetal ontogeny but are unable to maintain this pool, rapidly losing it within two days of embryonic development. A synchronous loss of megakaryocyte/erythrocyte progenitors results, along with a fatal, fetal anemia. At …

Landcover Change And Population Dynamics Of Florida Scrub-Jays And Florida Grasshopper Sparrows, David Breininger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I confronted empirical habitat data (1994-2004) and population data (1988-2005) with ecological theory on habitat dynamics, recruitment, survival, and dispersal to develop predictive relationships between landcover variation and population dynamics. I focus on Florida Scrub-Jays, although one chapter presents a model for the potential influence of habitat restoration on viability of the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow. Both species are unique to Florida landscapes that are dominated by shrubs and grasses and maintained by frequent fires. Both species are declining, even in protected areas, despite their protected status. I mapped habitat for both species using grid polygon cells to quantify population potential …

Zinc-Finger Protein Mcpip In Cell Death And Differentiation, Craig Younce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) plays a critical role in the development of cardiovascular diseases. How MCP-1 contributes to the development of heart disease is not understood. We present evidence that MCP-1 causes death in cardiac myoblasts, H9c2 by inducing oxidative stress, ER stress and autophagy via a novel Znfinger protein, MCP-1 induced protein (MCPIP). MCPIP expression caused cell death and knockdown of MCPIP, attenuated MCP-1 induced cell death. Expression of MCPIP resulted in induction of iNOS and production of reactive oxygen (ROS). It caused induction of NADPH oxidase subunit phox47 and its translocation to the cytoplasmic membrane. Oxidative stress led …

Synthesis Of Biocompatible Antioixidant Polymer Coated Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles, Its Oxidase Like Behavior And Cellular Uptake, Atul Asati

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cerium oxide nanoparticles have been widely used for various applications such as catalytic converters for automobile exhaust, ultraviolet absorber, and electrolyte in fuel cells. Most recently, cerium oxide nanoparticles (nanoceria) have been employed as potent free-radical scavengers with neuroprotective, radioprotective, and anti-inflammatory properties. These properties of cerium oxide nanoparticles can open new vistas in medicine and biotechnology. The present study utilizes the water-based-wet-chemical method to synthesize biocompatible,stable and highly monodisperse polymer coated cerium oxide nanoparticles. Polymer coated cerium oxide nanoparticles possess all the characteristics of the uncoated cerium oxide nanoparticles. These nanoparticles were found to be effective as pH-dependent antioxidant …

Tissue Engineered Myelination And The Stretch Reflex Arc Sensory Circuit: Defined Medium Formulation, Interface Design And Microfabrication, John Rumsey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The overall focus of this research project was to develop an in vitro tissue-engineered system that accurately reproduced the physiology of the sensory elements of the stretch reflex arc as well as engineer the myelination of neurons in the systems. In order to achieve this goal we hypothesized that myelinating culture systems, intrafusal muscle fibers and the sensory circuit of the stretch reflex arc could be bioengineered using serum-free medium formulations, growth substrate interface design and microfabrication technology. The monosynaptic stretch reflex arc is formed by a direct synapse between motoneurons and sensory neurons and is one of the fundamental …

Determinants Of Chloroplast Gene Expression And Applications Of Chloroplast Transformation In Lactuca Sativa And Nicotiana Tabacum, Tracey Ruhlman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Genetic modification of plastids in the model plant tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) has demonstrated that numerous foreign gene products can accumulate to high levels in this setting. Plastid biotechnology is maturing to encompass the improvement of food and feed species and the production of biopharmaceutical proteins for oral delivery necessitating development of stable transplastomic edible plants. In the interest of establishing an edible platform we have investigated the use of native and foreign regulatory elements in relation to foreign gene expression in plastids. Multiple sequence alignments of intergenic regions for 20 species of angiosperm showed that despite 95% identity in the …

Tourists' Attitudes Toward The Use Of Animals In Tourist Attractions: An Empirical Investigation, Amir Shani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From time immemorial human beings have utilized animals for various needs and purposes, which led societies to debate the justification for using animals and to reflect on the way in which animals are treated. These concerns have also resulted in various contemporary studies aimed to reveal interest groups'--as well as the general publics'--views and opinions on the issues under dispute. Nevertheless, despite the considerable incorporation of animals in entertainment and leisure venues, only limited efforts have been geared towards exploring the ethical aspects of using animals in these initiatives. This lack of attention is especially evident in the tourism literature, …